


Deception and Break

by candle_beck



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-22
Updated: 2011-09-22
Packaged: 2017-10-23 22:46:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/255904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candle_beck/pseuds/candle_beck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zito suffers a violent psychotic break.  No, literally this time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deception and Break

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted November 2006.

Deception and Break  
By Candle Beck

 

Danny wakes up at four in the morning, and Zito’s gone.

The covers hold his shape, pushed back at the bottom because Zito likes to sleep with his feet sticking out. Danny fishes his boxers off the floor and puts them on, stumbles out in search.

Zito’s by the window in the living room, yesterday’s sports section spread out on the table in front of him. He’s got a ballpoint pen and city light, marking the hell out of the paper.

“Hey.” Danny yawns. “What’re you doing?”

Zito looks up sharply, the light behind him so that his eyes are way down like gouges. He taps his blackened fingers in a quick shuffle, smiling.

“Just keeping an eye on things.”

“Good.” Danny’s jeans are on the floor; Zito had been fast and hard against him, right through the door, burns on his knees. Pulling them on, Danny says, “I should go, anyway. It’s late.”

Zito’s head bobs, glancing back down at the paper and carefully underlining something. He scratches at the inside of his wrist with the pen, leaving lightning bolt shapes scrawled over thin blue veins.

“Billy’s sending me messages through the press,” Zito says, his eyes black-flashing.

“’Kay. Where’s my belt?”

“Stole it.” Zito’s dismissive, studying the paper intently. “I’m starting a collection.”

Danny rolls his eyes. “Whatever.”

Danny spots his T-shirt peeking out from under the couch and puts it on. He crosses to Zito and places his hand on Zito’s chin, tipping his face up. Zito’s skin is cool, goosebumps on his arms. The shadows fall out of his eyes with the change in angle, and Danny is able to kiss him goodbye without too much uncertainty.

“Get some sleep, man,” he says, licking across Zito’s lower lip and then drawing back.

Zito blinks up at him, painfully good-looking. Danny can’t believe his luck, sometimes.

“I gotta finish this.”

Danny pushes a hand across Zito’s forehead and it’s quiet enough that he can hear Zito’s wristwatch ticking. Zito only takes it off when he’s pitching; he wears it in the shower. Danny keeps that in his mind, easily navigating the dark apartment.

In the elevator, he notices that he’s got gray fingerprints of ink on his arm, just under his shirtsleeve. He wets his fingers and rubs it off, feeling his heart give a little bit as it disappears.

*

Danny remembers being stunned.

It had been in Phoenix last year, three official weeks into this new team. He’d been looking for fissures, cracks, places where he could get a handhold and wedge his way in. They were so tight, Chavez tackling Zito on the floor, Harden’s ankle hooked around Crosby's, jostling for space under the table.

Danny was keeping mostly quiet, a steady diet of energy bars making his vision fuzz at the edges. They were tearing the shit out of Mark Mulder’s house, which Crosby was subletting, and Zito was destructively mischievous, rearranging the furniture, chipping off paint and splinters of wood, writing in permanent ink on the walls.

Danny had come upon him out on the patio with one of Mulder’s golf clubs, whaling on the aluminum siding, each swing twanging a huge metallic burr into the air and leaving a heavy dent behind.

“Hey,” Danny had said helplessly, because this was far removed from his area of expertise. Zito had turned on him, panting and grinning like crazy. Danny thought that maybe this was just how the world worked out here. No one else seemed particularly concerned about Zito’s behavior, and then Zito was coming for him.

He dropped the golf club, wild sheen on his eyes, and pinned Danny up against the ruined wall. Took hold of Danny’s wrists and held him neatly down, fists tucked into the dents. Thin sweat shone on Zito’s throat, the porch light guttering and spinning, and Danny thought, thank god he noticed. He’d been waiting to sleep with Zito since approximately ten seconds after they met, and it’d gotten worse with each day.

He pressed up against Zito, felt how he was shivering from exertion. Zito, grinning and biting at his mouth, had been almost a stranger at that point, and when he’d finally let Danny go, Danny’s arms had immediately fallen around Zito’s shoulders, pulling him closer.

“Good trade, good trade,” Zito muttered against his mouth.

“You and him,” Danny tried to say, wanting somehow to place this in history, understand the things that came before to bring them to this point. Zito laughed and pushed his hand into Danny’s jeans.

“No, never.”

Zito’s hair was damp on Danny’s face. Danny was astonished, didn’t know then that Zito had a tendency to smile and lie.

*

Fifteen months later, Zito slumps down next to Danny on the plane and pushes white iPod headphones into his hand. Danny pulls out of a near doze and leans into Zito’s shoulder, liking the solidity of him and the rumble of the airplane around them.

“Listen to this,” Zito says, combing his hand quickly through Danny’s hair, trying to fit the headphones into his ears. Danny takes over and wedges them in place, sleepy and accepting of whatever Zito wants him to do.

Peter Gammons’s stuttery voice comes to him, talking about the trade deadline. “What is this?” Danny asks, because he’d been expecting music.

“Podcast,” Zito answers. He tugs his St. Christopher out of his shirt, winding the chain around his fingers. “Listen.”

Danny does, haphazardly, really only trying to hear one of their teammates’ names, watching Zito’s fingers twist and gleam silver. He wonders if he can convince Zito to go make out in the bathroom.

The podcast ends without mention of the Oakland A’s. Danny gives Zito a questioning look. Closing his hand tight on the medallion, Zito scowls at him.

“Didn’t you hear it?”

Danny shrugs, wanting to put his hand on the side of Zito’s neck.

“The thing, West Coast sources. You didn’t hear that?” Zito lets the medallion fall loose, and takes the iPod back, spinning the wheel to rewind it.

“Um. Wasn’t he talking about the Dodgers?”

“Read between the lines, Daniel. Here. Listen closer this time.” Zito presses his hand down on Danny’s ear, making everything echo. Danny sighs and listens to Gammons talking again, but he doesn’t know what Zito’s getting at. West Coast sources report that the Dodgers are talking to the Cubs, but that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with them.

Danny plays along, nodding. “Oh, sure. Right. Dude.”

Zito’s eyes are big and frightened. “You see? You see?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” Zito’s hand slides back into Danny’s hair. “We’ve got to do something about this.” He pets Danny absently, his face blue-lit by the iPod’s screen. Danny wants to check his palm and see if the St. Christopher made an impression.

“Whatever you want, man.” Danny is slightly undone by the movement of Zito’s hand. He’s easily persuaded, talked into almost anything.

Zito’s fingers skip off Danny’s neck and he looks past to the window. There’s a jittering nervousness in the set of his jaw, the corners of his mouth. “Hate flying,” he whispers. “We can’t let them do this to us.”

Danny yawns. Zito looks at him with an oddly soft expression on his face. Trying to smile, Danny falls asleep.

*

Danny has lost three shoes and two T-shirts and a belt so far this year. He’s pretty sure that if he searches Zito’s apartment, he’ll find most if not all, this collection that Zito’s keeping. It’s a little weird, but Danny can forgive it because he wants souvenirs too. He carries one of Zito’s guitar picks around in his back pocket constantly, a note that Zito left him once, _turns out that you are in actuality the best I’ve ever had_ , folded carefully into his wallet.

He goes over to Zito’s room through the connecting door, finds him by the window, little white packets in his hands.

“Hey. You ready to go?”

Zito whips around, startled. A spray of crystalline white flies from his hand. Danny lifts his eyebrows. “What is that?”

“Salt.” Zito clears his throat, resumes his work at the window. He’s pouring the salt in skinny lines along the sill. Danny looks around and sees a similar line in front of the hallway door. He looks down and sees another under his feet, salt ground into the carpet.

“Okay,” Danny says slowly. “Should I even ask?”

“Probably better if you don’t,” Zito mutters, not facing him. He rips open another packet with his teeth, spits out paper. “You’ve got a standing invitation; mustn’t affect you. Not you I have to worry about, of course.”

He’s talking under his breath, tapping out the salt. Danny sits on the bed, watching him with his hands woven between his knees. Zito absently swipes a hand across his cheek and leaves a wing of silvery white behind.

“The guys are waiting,” Danny tells him, his mouth dry.

“’m almost done.” Two more packets and Zito straightens, brushes off his hands. “All right.”

He’s barefoot, tousled, but Zito could roll out of bed and look fine in a club. He carries it with him, clean assurance from a lifetime of success in everything he ever tried. He studies Danny for a moment, his eyes lighting up.

“Hey.” Zito crosses and pushes Danny by his shoulders back on the bed. Danny’s breath catches, the light on the ceiling perfectly outlining Zito’s head. Straddling his hips, leaning down to him, Zito says conversationally, “You’re kinda stupidly hot, you know that?”

Danny grins hysterically. “Yeah, well.” He pushes up and licks the salt off Zito’s face, gets a long kiss for his trouble.

“Are they really waiting for us?” Zito murmurs, grinding against him and flattening his hands under Danny’s shirt. “Because we’re safe now, protected. Can’t touch us in here.”

Danny doesn’t understand what Zito’s talking about, but that’s nothing new. He can’t think about anything except the weight of Zito on him, Zito’s mouth on his throat, stray pieces of salt dissolving on Danny’s ribs. He fists his hands in Zito’s shirt and they can be late. Nothing’s more important than this.

*

“Lastings Milledge,” Zito snarls, and Danny wakes up. He jerks, Zito’s hand heavy on his shoulder, Zito’s teeth brushing his ear.

“What? What?” Danny’s blank with confusion, white-minded. He was dreaming of Zito going down on him against a mirror, perspective all fucked up, seeing Zito’s head duck again and again in the reflection. He’s still half-hard and Zito’s speaking in tongues.

“Lastings Milledge. Beane’s in love with him.”

Danny turns his head, moaning a little. Zito’s hard white smile cuts into him. “Right. Fucking time is it?”

Zito’s hand narrows into a point, poking Danny’s shoulder. Danny slides closer to him unthinkingly, gravitation and the magnetic field that surrounds Zito.

“Billy. Is going to trade me. For Lastings Milledge.” He punctuates with jabs, dime-sized bruises that Danny can feel forming.

“You’re talking shit,” Danny mumbles, pushes his arm over Zito’s side and sighs into his throat. Zito is trembling with energy, his pulse hammering like it can escape his skin.

“Danny. Listen to me.” Zito smooths Danny’s hair back, angling his face up. Zito’s eyes are shining, anger in the tight draw of his cheek and his hands cradling Danny’s head. “Do you want me to get traded?”

Danny narrows his eyes. “You know I don’t.”

“Okay. Okay. Don’t lie to me, Dan, I couldn’t take it.” Zito runs his hand down Danny’s face. “You, you’ve got to help me.”

Rolling over onto his back and pushing himself up to sit against the headboard, Danny takes in the fact that Zito’s wearing jeans again, which he definitely wasn’t the last time Danny saw him. His face is pallored, color shrunk back by hours in front of his laptop, which is glowing blue on the table by the window. Zito twines his hand in Danny’s hair, gazing at him plaintively.

Danny hums to settle him, thinking for a moment. “Mets prospect, right?” Zito nods quickly. “You heard this from somewhere?”

“ESPN.com.”

Danny rolls his eyes in exasperation. “Jesus, you can’t believe that shit. They’ll write anything, you _know_ that.”

Zito tugs sharply at his hair and Danny curses him. Zito’s mouth curls in a sneer, which is a pretty good look on him, and Danny touches Zito’s hip, pushing his fingers under his jeans.

“Look. Billy can’t trade you unless he gets pitching back, real fucking solid pitching that’s pennant-ready right now. Which the Mets aren’t gonna offer. So fuck Lastings Milledge. And calm down.”

Exhaling, Zito presses his teeth into his lower lip and thumbs Danny’s ear. He puts his forehead for a moment on Danny’s collarbone, flat and warm, and then sits up again, blowing up to get his hair out of his eyes. They both need haircuts, Danny thinks.

“He’s been trying to trade me for years, man,” Zito says low. “I can’t keep living like this.” He looks hollow and washed out, his shoulders slumped.

Danny puts his arms around him, yawning into the perfect curve of Zito’s shoulder, vultures at the salted windows. He murmurs comforting things until Zito is motionless and quiet, but Danny is vaguely aware of Zito getting up again an hour or two later, feeling the scrape of denim along his arm, half-opening his eyes to see Zito framed by the city window and washed with blue light, his edges bleeding into the glass.

*

When they get back, Danny goes home to his fiancée, as always a little surprised to find her in his house.

He recaps the trip, omitting certain parts that would only cause her pain. She deftly talks trash about the New York Yankees and he grins foolishly, delighted by her. They eat on the back porch, twilight turning the sky into a day-old bruise.

It’s later, after they’ve turned off the lights, that Danny’s cell phone goes off, spitting chimes. Danny wants to ignore it, warm and comfortable in his own bed, but it presses like a headache behind his eyes and eventually he gets up.

Zito is talking fast, almost out of breath, “Danny, Danny, you gotta come out here.”

“What’s wrong?” Something spurs in Danny at the sound of Zito’s voice, all broken and frantic.

“Somebody broke into my place.”

“What? When?” Danny is already reaching for his pants, imagining broken glass, snapped deadbolts. His fiancée is far asleep; she’s slept through earthquakes, much worse than this.

“I wasn’t fucking _here_ , Danny, I don’t know when.” Zito’s voice cracks. “Are you coming?”

“Yeah, yeah. Course I am. Be there in twenty.”

Zito’s door looks normal. When Danny knocks, the shadows of Zito’s feet appear under the door and he won’t let Danny in until he slides his driver’s license under to prove that he is who he says he is. Zito’s eyes are blacked out with fear.

“You don’t recognize my voice?” Danny asks, trying to inject some levity into the situation, hating the glazed plastic cast of Zito’s features.

“I don’t recognize anything. Come on, they might still be around.”

Zito’s got Danny’s arm held tight, dragging him inside. Zito huddles close to him, hooking his hands in Danny’s belt. Danny takes a look around but everything seems to be in place. “What’s missing?”

“I don’t know, it’s not, there’s nothing physical.” Zito rubs his face in the place between Danny’s shoulder blades. “I know someone’s been in here.”

“Wait a minute.” Danny turns and takes hold of Zito’s shoulders. “Nothing’s missing? Your door wasn’t jimmied. What makes you think somebody broke in?”

“I _know_ ,” Zito insists, thumping his fists on Danny’s chest. “I can _feel_ it.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, dude.” Danny sighs in exasperation and runs a hand through his hair, tired and sick of Zito’s paranoia, how easily he was suckered. “You’re crazy.”

Zito’s face contorts, and he shoves Danny as hard as he can. Danny trips and lands solidly on his back, knocking the wind out of him in a whoosh. Zito stands above him with his fists clenched, his face flushed.

“Don’t call me crazy.”

“Jesus,” Danny gasps, trying to catch his breath. He’s suddenly afraid, because if Zito wants to hit him or kick him or beat him bloody, Danny doesn’t think he’ll be able to fight back. Some kind of sin, to hit a face like that.

Zito looks like he’s honestly considering it, and Danny suspects that his difficulty breathing is not entirely due to having the wind knocked out of him. Eventually, though, Zito’s hands loosen and regret flashes across his face. He sits down on the floor, taking his head in his hands.

“Danny,” Zito says softly. Danny can only see the bow of his head, his fine hands sliding through his hair. “I’m sorry I pushed you.”

Danny sits up, his heart jackrabbiting. “It’s okay.”

“I’m not crazy.”

Danny cautiously lays his hand on Zito’s head, tangling it with Zito’s own when Zito doesn’t jerk away. “I know. I don’t think you are, man, I just. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Someone was here,” Zito says to the floor. Danny nods, though Zito can’t see it, stroking his thumb across the back of Zito’s hand.

“Okay.”

“I didn’t have time to put the salt down.” Zito sounds absolutely heartbroken, and Danny can’t stand him like that, something elemental and powerful making it imperative that he fix this, as soon as possible, before he takes another breath.

“I’ll do it now, okay? You just. Just wait here. I’ll do it real quick.”

He stands, and Zito takes his hands away, looks up at him, sleepless red-rimmed eyes and slack mouth. Danny attempts a smile, trying not to think about how totally fucking bizarre his life has become, how normal has become the outlier, the stranger.

*

Zito tastes like rain or steam or something like that. He makes Danny daydream about drowning.

Last year, when Danny lived in San Francisco and wasn’t engaged, he spent most of his free time over at Zito’s place, chalk on the sidewalks, pretty sea views. Zito slept everywhere like a cat, and there were colorful radio station and surf shop decals covering the entire surface of his kitchen table.

Danny was half-obsessed with him for the first few months, before he’d mostly gotten over Zito’s jagged laugh and habit of blowing Danny when he got bored. Until then, though, he bought Zito books and records and calcium gummies from Trader Joe’s because Zito couldn’t abide milk.

Zito talked in his sleep and sometimes he talked to people who weren’t there, but Danny wasn’t overly concerned about that, figured Zito was the type of guy who needed to say things out loud for them to count. Zito lit matches just to watch them burn, dropping them into a water glass when they were black and curled.

He’d told Danny about being on Letterman and going up to the roof, pitching at a window on the building opposite, and it had taken him three tries before he’d shattered it.

Zito started throwing baseballs at his own windows after that, but Danny had stopped him after two, laughing so hard he almost passed out. They’d slept on the floor, cold in the stinging wind, pieces of glass falling in with small bell-like sounds. The next morning, Danny had stood beside Zito in front of the building superintendent, swearing that the broken windows were an accident.

He was impossible to predict. Weeks and months passed without rhythm or sense, until Danny felt like he was losing his grip on reality, his thoughts fractured and unbound, his hands shaking all the time. Danny became aware that Zito had managed to get in him like blood, and he panicked a little, backed right the fuck off.

Zito let him go, occupied with the voices inside his head and the thoughtlessly cruel pranks he liked to pull on Eric Chavez. Danny, wounded, sulked around for awhile with an ache like a muscle strain in his chest, slept with a lot of girls and found himself dating one seriously after the All-Star break.

Zito didn’t seem to care at all, so Danny cornered him in the video room and demanded answers. Guileless, smiling, Zito had shrugged and said, “I thought I did something to piss you off. I don’t know what, though, so I’m not sorry.”

Danny almost put him through the wall. Zito’s head snapped back against the cinderblocks, and his eyes went dazed and shocky. He locked his hands around Danny’s wrists, Danny gripping his shirt, said breathlessly, “Fuck, do that again.”

Second time around, Zito got progressively more erratic, coloring his palms with magic marker and leaving smeary handprints on Danny’s skin, dirtily kissing him in a club in front of the whole world. Once, Danny walked in on Zito having a screaming fight with whoever it was that he saw when he was alone.

Time never regained its structure. Danny moved in with his girlfriend and eventually asked her to marry him, and he keeps fucking around with Zito, ethically clean because he isn’t hurting anybody. Nobody knows.

Zito is a good secret to keep, and he salts the windows and doors of every room they sleep in, mumbling to himself. He tapes long Xs on the window glass, too, biting off strips with his teeth, telling Danny that the wind is dangerous. They have to be careful.

Danny has noticed the changes in him, the way that Zito doesn’t sleep much anymore and doesn’t call his mom and forgets what day he’s pitching until they get to the ballpark and he sees his name on the lineup card. Zito scratches at his arms until they’re red and raw, and Danny makes him stop.

A lot of things remain, though. Zito still puts his hand on Danny’s shoulder, guiding him through crowds. Zito gets drunk and explains to Danny that there’s no real difference between a splitter and a curve; it’s just deception and break. Zito says that he would walk through fire if Danny asked him to. Zito makes the best hot chocolate in the whole world. Zito is made strong by the parts of him that are shattering; if they survive this, they can survive anything.

There are spies in corner booths and alleys. Zito says that two guys in a black Cadillac have been following him around for weeks, city to city, hotel to ballpark to airport and home again.

Zito tells him one night, his face shadowed and solemn, “They’re watching us right now. They watch me all the time.”

Danny has always heard it said that Zito is a little nuts, even before he met him. He never realized that it was literal, though. Zito has a fault line in his mind, driven hard and deep, and the pressure grows by the day. All Danny can do is place his hand on Zito’s chest and swear to him, “If they want to get to you, they’re gonna have to go through me.”

*

Zito starts tracking Lasting Milledge’s movements. At considerable expense, he has the daily editions of the Virginian-Pilot couriered to his house, claiming uncertainly that there are differences between the physical pages of the newspaper and what’s posted on the website. Milledge is playing in the International League for the Norfolk Tides, and Zito tapes up articles about him, box scores, ads for white sales and ammunition.

The walls are being slowly colonized, covered over. Zito’s handwriting is cramped and scrawled in the margins, thick underlines seeping ink into the plaster.

He also collects anything that Billy Beane says, even when it’s only about the management group or the theorized new ballpark. Billy Beane is speaking in a code that only Zito can decipher. Zito’s fingers are worked hard by ballpoint pens, scruffing up the insides of Danny’s mouth.

Sitting on the floor, at least six different papers spread out on the coffee table, Zito chews on the pen cap and explains to Danny, “He’s more like Swisher than anyone else. More power. Can’t play first, or at least, he hasn’t tried yet. Can’t switch-hit. But he’s so fucking patient, man. Look at this.”

Zito jabs at a column of statistics. Danny leans forward on the couch, canting his head to the side, but the print is too small and anyway, Zito’s moved on to something else.

“That little theory of yours about pitching is bullshit, by the way.” Zito circles something, his forehead lined. “We went pretty fucking far on three pitchers, once upon a time. Now, there’s you, there’s Joe, there’s Rich. Three.”

“Tell me again about how far you went on three pitchers,” Danny says with a smirk, bending his fingers back to crack them. Zito darts a look up at him, the pen cap stuck out of the corner of his mouth like a short black cigarette.

“Don’t patronize me, Danny, people’ve killed for a team like we had.”

Danny lets that go, not particularly wanting to press Zito for specifics. “Nobody’s ready to rely on the three of us, anyway.”

“Of course not, but only because Richie’s disappeared. If he was a real _person_ , if he was more than a figment of my fucking imagination, well.”

Danny smiles hesitantly. “Um. Richie’s real, dude. We just saw him today.”

Zito waves his hand as if the question of Rich Harden’s existence couldn’t possibly be less important. “Nothing’s real until it’s in the box score. You know, when Chavez broke his hand, Mulder used to call him ghost boy. And he was right too, it was like somebody’d scooped out everything inside him and we had this fucking puppet, walking around wearing Chavvy’s face.”

He spits out the pen cap and carefully dog-ears a corner of the newspaper, rolling it between his fingers until it’s soft as cotton. Danny wants very badly to take him to bed and force him to sleep. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen anyone look as tired as Zito looks right now.

“Me and Chavvy, we used to fuck around, you know?” Zito says without looking at him.

Danny lifts his eyebrows. “Really.”

“Mmm.” Zito writes something down, chewing on the corner of his lip. “It was epic. I couldn’t breathe without him.”

Danny frowns. “What happened?”

“Ah. He cut me off. Murdered me. I was a wreck, felt like I was bleeding all the time.” He looks up, smiles strangely. “But then I got better.”

Leaning forward again, Danny tries to read what Zito’s been writing, but the letters are alien, crosses and scars. “I wouldn’t have thought. I mean, Chavvy’s so. Not.”

“Well, you don’t know, do you? You weren’t here, were you?”

Danny swallows, weaving his fingers together. He hates it when Zito throws that back in his face, the many years that they existed without being at all aware of each other. It seems impossible now, that he ever lived like that.

“No,” he admits. “It’s just surprising.”

He turns it over in his mind a few times, Chavez’s black hair against Zito’s untanned shoulder, the rough of Zito’s thumb on the scruff under Chavez’s lower lip. Chavez doesn’t seem to like Zito much, but if it ended as badly as Zito says, maybe that’s just a specific kind of broken heart.

Zito picks up his Swiss Army knife, slits it down the length of the newspaper, cutting out a long column. He folds the blade back against the underside of his chin, and stands. Danny hands him the tape, watches as Zito leans his knee on the arm of the couch and tapes the column up on the wall. Zito smooths the air pockets out of it, and sits back on his heel, one hand on Danny’s shoulder to steady himself.

Looking up at him, Danny is struck for probably the seven hundredth time how completely gone on Zito he is, terribly aware of the lengths to which he’ll go to make sure that Zito is kept safe. Zito’s eyes are tracking across the field of newspaper articles, jumping his fingers from one to another.

“There’s a pattern here,” he says quietly. “If I can just figure it out.”

Danny tips his head onto Zito’s bent leg, feeling the warmth of him and Zito’s hand carding absently through his hair. He thinks about patterns for awhile, knowing that the only thing properly ordered in Zito’s body is the beat of his heart.

*

They go down to the ATM on the corner every night, and Zito takes out five hundred dollars, his daily maximum. Danny kicks around by the newspaper boxes, his coat collar pulled up around his jaw. He can see Zito’s eyes flickering in the curved mirror above the machine, one hand shielding the other as he types in his PIN.

There are four shiny new locks on Zito’s door, and a switchblade pressing out the fabric of his jeans pocket.

“What if you don’t get traded?” Danny asks, a largely academic question.

Zito flattens his hand on the money slot, glancing back over his shoulder. “It’s an inevitability, dude. Unless I think of a way to stop it.”

It’s the beginning of July and Danny has started to dream of broad-shouldered black-and-white outfielders and Billy Beane’s terrifying grin. Zito has twenty-seven thousand dollars rationed out into coat pockets and hidden in bags of flour, back upstairs. He carries a road map of the state with him wherever he goes.

“Hypothetically, then. Billy realizes the error of his ways, whatever. You get to finish out the season. It’s your walk year anyway, man.”

Slight chill at the thought, the idea of next year, choked and lonely. Zito is the American League, he is Oakland and San Francisco, he is the answer to every question Danny has had for the past year and a half.

Zito folds the money in half and tucks it into the inside pocket of his coat. His knuckles are strained and white, his face sallow in the streetlight.

“I don’t think I can leave,” Zito says. “It’s holy ground, you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“Places that get inside you. Something cries out when you leave. I keep coming back here, like I got no choice.”

They start walking back, Zito’s hand inside his coat, inside the pocket, holding onto the money. Danny flinches as a car alarm bursts a block over, as frightened of tangible things as Zito is of that which he cannot see.

“Do you want a choice? I mean, would it be better if you could leave and not have to worry about it?”

Zito laughs hoarsely. “Not worry about it? Lost and far from home, Danny, how’s that not supposed to worry me?”

“So you’ll stay, then?” Danny asks, trying not to sound too hopeful, his hands in his pockets. “You’ll take what Beane can offer?”

Zito’s face shuts down, his mouth twisting. “I’m not taking anything from that motherfucker. Kept me half-alive for seven fucking years. Fucking _bait_. Like I was never even worth the effort. I’ll cut off his hands, cut off my own, before I’ll sign another of his fucking contracts.”

Danny thinks swiftly of the arguments he can use to counter. Beane had given Zito a shot no one else would have. Beane had had Zito in the starting rotation when he was twenty-two years old and everyone had said it’d be the ruin of the team. This kid, this soft-tosser, this flake, better in magazines than he was on the field. Beane is the only one who saw Zito coming, and now he’s to blame for everything.

Danny gets confused. Zito’s defenses are working on a skeleton crew, clawing out freakish rationale and lovely delusion, but surely they can still recover. The tall lines of the city skid upwards from the sidewalk and push him off-balance. He lets his arm knock Zito’s, not questioning the small peace he gains from that.

“If you don’t sign one of his contracts, how are you gonna stay?”

Zito stops, slit eyes casing the corners, the empty cars, before he pulls Danny into a recessed doorway. His hand wide on Danny’s stomach, Zito’s eyes close halfway, and he leans in to say into Danny’s ear:

“What if Billy’s not the general manager anymore?”

Danny draws back, shocked. “No fucking way, man,” he says automatically. “Oakland would burn.”

Zito brushes his mouth on Danny’s cheek. “What if Oakland burns?” he whispers.

Danny is speechless, watching a slow grin spread across Zito’s face like frost on a window, imagining for a dizzying moment that he can already see flames in Zito’s eyes.

*

Concerned about the stability of his landmarks, Danny goes in search of more information, someone with a better grasp of the situation than can possibly be expected of him.

Eric Chavez is in the trainer’s room, IV fluids filtering in through the back of his hand. He’s been playing with a wicked flu all week, throwing up his stomach lining between innings. Dehydration has made him razor-thin and grayed his features. With Scutaro already starting at short, they can’t afford to lose another infielder, no matter the kind of pain Chavez is in. Wrenched black part of major league baseball, something that Danny never considered when he was coming up.

Chavez lifts his head off the trainer’s table as Danny comes in, blinking stickily. “Yo, Danny,” he says, his voice rusty.

Danny shuts the door behind him and pulls up a chair. “Hey, Chav, how you feeling?”

“Akin to death.”

“You look better, though,” Danny lies. Chavez half-smiles like he knows that’s bullshit. Danny stares at the needle stuck in Chavez’s hand, the translucent tape showing a dark spot of blood. “I wanted to ask you something. About Zito.”

Chavez closes his eyes, his hair as black as wet coal against his pale skin. “Knock yourself out.”

“I. Is he, like. Weirder than normal, this year?”

Chavez’s chest hitches, coughing out a weak laugh. “Normal’s kinda relative with Zito.”

“I think I’m picking up on that,” Danny acknowledges, thinking of the shadows made by the Xs Zito’s taped on the windows, slicing diagonal across Zito’s body.

“Did he do something in particular?”

Danny takes a moment, watching the level of the fluids descend minutely, picturing the work inside Chavez’s veins. He’s treading dangerously near to betrayal, wanting to tell Chavez about the lines of salt and the wall of newspaper, the brown patches under Zito’s eyes, the hand-drawn map to Billy Beane’s house that Danny found inside a comic book two days ago.

“No.” His face down, Danny feels his eyelid twitching. “Just seems a little. Off.”

“You’d know better’n me,” Chavez tells him. “You and him are still screwing around, right?”

Danny’s head jerks up. He gapes at Chavez’s composed face for a moment, before swallowing a few times and managing, “I, um.”

Chavez opens his eyes, rolling his head to the side. “Was that supposed to be a secret? Because, dude. Not so much.” He grins, sudden bright expression looking completely abnormal. “Half the Western world knows Zito goes for guys. Strange affinity for his teammates, too, which Mulder tried to talk him out of, like, _constantly_ , but I think Zito would rather eat glass than take advice from Mulder.”

Danny’s blushing so bad he expects his skin to start peeling. Chavez gives him a questioning look. “Did he not tell you about that?”

Shaking his head, eyes fixed on the floor, Danny answers haltingly, “No. No. We never really. I never really asked. He only. He told me about you. That’s all.”

“Told you what about me?”

Danny glances up, finds Chavez looking at him with remarkably innocent curiosity. He weaves his fingers together between his knees.

“About you and him. You know. When you guys were. Together.”

There’s a long pause, and then Chavez asks, aghast, “He told you _what_?”

Danny shrugs uncomfortably. “It’s cool, man. I can keep a secret. I mean, obviously not very well, but I’m not gonna-”

“He told you we fucked?” Chavez interrupts, his voice getting higher, his eyes growing. The hand without a needle in it is clenched, and Danny worries that Chavez will forget himself and clench the other, tear the needle out of his vein. He glances over at the door, wondering if he could make it.

“Really, you don’t have to worry about me,” Danny says in what he hopes is a reassuring tone. “I just, I thought I should ask you because you have the history with him or whatever, maybe you can, like, shed some light.”

Chavez’s eyes are deeply furious, huge, and the concrete walls seem to shake in sympathy. “I never laid one hand on him. I’ve never fucked a guy in my _life_ , what the fuck do you think I am?”

Danny blinks at him, honestly stunned. Chavez sucks a breath in between his teeth, trembling.

“He’s slept with Mulder and Richie and Crosby once when they were both too drunk to see. But not me. Never me.”

Danny shakes his head, remembering the sincerity of the pain in Zito’s face when he’d told him about Chavez, _couldn’t breathe, murdered me_. He’s scared stiff, all at once.

“Fuck, Chavvy,” he whispers. “He thinks he did. He. He believes it.” He breaches the space between them and grabs Chavez’s arm, Chavez trying to jerk away but he’s beaten and powerless, and Danny asks him desperately, “You swear you never did?”

Chavez’s mouth compresses down to nothing. His pulse runs crookedly under Danny’s hand.

“I swear. On my son’s life. I never touched him.”

“Oh, god.” Danny lets Chavez go, drops his head into his hands. “He’s. Fuck. Worse than I thought. There’s something seriously wrong with him, man, I. I didn’t realize.

Chavez chokes on a laugh. “I wish I could say that surprises me.”

“What are we gonna do?”

Chavez looks at him in disbelief. “Excuse the hell out of me, but I’m not getting within fucking earshot of this shit.”

“You’re his friend,” Danny protests, pressing his fingers into the padding of the table.

“Not that good a friend.” Chavez’s eyes spark hard. “You think he’s gonna do something stupid?”

Danny thinks of the switchblade, the disjointed push of vengeance and anger that trails Zito like theme music. A map to Billy Beane’s house and a code that Danny can’t read, Zito’s master plan, dreams of arson.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” He beseeches Chavez, the vinyl creaking under his hands. “Please, Eric, you gotta help me.”

The tension in Chavez’s jaw and shoulders fades, slumping him back on the table. He rubs his free hand across his face, sick with exhaustion.

“Best you can do is get far far away from him,” Chavez tells him sadly. “I’ve known him for way too long. He doesn’t do anything except with everything he’s got. If he’s going crazy, he’s gonna go the distance.”

*

It’s raining as Danny drives west, black clouds low enough to block out the top of the bridge. Red brake lights fill his vision, and he is resigned to dying in a car crash sometime in the near future, water flying out in wings around his car.

There are gray and red people alongside the bridge, floating high over the water, hard to make out through the rain.

Soaked, his shirt clinging to his arms, he knocks on Zito’s door and obligingly sticks his driver’s license under, hearing the snaps and clicks as the locks are thrown back, Danny stepping in over the line of salt. There are bits of white fuzz in Zito’s hair, and Danny flicks at them, kissing Zito on the mouth with the door at his back.

“What’s going on?”

Zito shrugs, his fingers around Danny’s wrist. His lower lip is bitten and chapped, his eyes haunted. He leads Danny back into the living room and Danny stops short in the doorway, staring at the wreck of the couch. Salt-colored stuffing bleeds out of long slashes in the cushions, bare wood visible like bones through the torn fabric.

“What. What happened?” Danny asks.

Zito shrugs again, but he takes the switchblade out of his pocket and snicks it open. Danny presses back against the wall for a second, his heart in his throat, but Zito just kneels on the couch and resumes destruction.

“I lost a guitar pick.”

“I don’t think it’s in the couch, dude,” Danny tells him, secretly freaked out beyond belief. His throat is clogged, watching Zito methodically rip the knife down the cushion and then bury his hand inside.

“I’ve looked everywhere else,” Zito answers, distracted, arm gone halfway to his elbow. “It’s either in here or it’s in the walls.”

Danny quickly weighs the value of debate, deciding that it’s better for Zito to tear apart his couch than the walls. He fingers the guitar pick in his pocket, hoping it’s not the one Zito’s looking for, because Zito turns on a dime these days, doesn’t believe in talismans anymore.

Sitting on the coffee table, Danny says as steadily as he can manage, “I talked to Chavvy today.”

“Is that right.” Zito pulls his arm out, twists and feathers of white drifting around him, sticking to his shirt. “He looks like hell, have you noticed that? Painful as fuck, watching him play.”

“Yeah. Um. I can imagine.” Danny studies his hands. “Listen. I was, like, talking to him. About you.”

Zito’s head yanks up, sharp glazed expression on his face. “He said something about me?”

“Kinda. See, he, um. He doesn’t really. Remember being with you. Which seemed weird to me.”

Danny digs his thumbnail into the heel of his palm, hoping ceaselessly that Zito will laugh and say he was just joking, so fucking gullible, man.

He glances up to find Zito blinking and looking terrifically lost, the knife silver-white and shining as lightning shreds across the window.

“He pretends it didn’t happen,” Zito says morosely. “Kills me, you know? He looks at me like there was never anything, like we’ve only been friends or maybe not even that. Like it’s so fucking awful, like he wants me to disappear or something.” He shakes his head, stabs into the cushion again. “I wish he would stop, but he’s. I can’t talk to him anymore.”

Danny doesn’t answer, doubt creeping in again. It’s possible that Zito is telling the truth about everything, about Eric Chavez, about the injustices visited upon him by Billy Beane, about the immolation of the world if he gets traded. Zito’s cutting the guts out of the couch, boyish with fluff in his hair, as if he’s lost a pillow fight. Danny would like very much to believe him.

“Deadline’s in six days,” Zito says, deliberately changing the subject. “This fucking weather is going to make things difficult.”

Glancing at the wall, Danny notices a bright flare of red among all the yellowing newsprint, a crimson X slashed across Beane’s face. His stomach turns slow and nauseous, picturing horrible ends.

“What are you going to do?”

Zito looks over at him, lightning stuttering across his features, but before he can answer, his hand jerks the knife out of the cushion too fast, blade flashing and slicing into his arm.

Danny makes a shocked noise, blood springing up on Zito’s arm, rose red and unbelievably vivid. Zito stares down at it in numb surprise. Danny stumbles over to the couch, flinging the knife away to stick and shiver in the carpet, and wraps his hands tight around Zito’s arm, feeling the metal-warmth of Zito’s blood smearing on his palms.

“Dude. Hospital,” Danny says roughly, taking one slick hand off Zito’s arm to claw into his pocket, his cell phone slipping and bouncing on the torn cushion. There’s blood on everything, seeping out from under his hand, mixing with the rain already dampening his jeans.

Zito picks up the phone before Danny can, weird hazy smile on his face. “It’s okay, Danny. It doesn’t really hurt.”

“Your arm is _cut open_ ,” Danny says forcefully, his skin leeched white, feeling every beat of Zito’s heart in the push of blood. “You need stitches, antibiotics, something. Paramedics. Give me my phone.”

Zito holds it behind his back like a kid playing keep away. Danny wants to curse or kill something, thinking that each second is another handful of lost blood, Zito shrinking and shriveling, draining right here with their legs tangled together.

“Don’t fuck around, babe, come on,” Danny pleads, but Zito only grins a little bit, plucking at Danny’s fingers.

“Lemme see. Just for a second, I just wanna see how bad.”

Zito tugs at Danny’s fingers until Danny relents and lets him see, his hand wet and unsteady. He looks too, holding his breath, sees the messy line of red across the soft skin of Zito’s underarm. Not too serious, really, probably doesn’t need stitches and thank god it’s his right arm, but for some reason Danny still can’t quite manage to breathe.

He watches bleakly as Zito skids his fingertips around the edges, humming under his breath. Zito glances up, smiling like a tenth strikeout.

“I can barely feel it.”

Danny shakes his head, whispering, “Please.”

But Zito just pulls his thumb through the blood curiously, and then raises his hand to his face, drawing two thick uneven blocks under his eyes. Danny’s horrified, seeing Zito’s teeth shining white, a red tear snaking down his cheek.

“For the glare,” Zito tells him, his eyes hooded and reflecting the glow of lightning off the fresh blood. Danny reels, _holy shit_ , but he can’t think of a good way to say, you are batshit crazy and need to be committed.

Zito’s smile fades a little bit as he looks at Danny, his ruined fingertips brushing at Danny’s cheek before Danny wrenches away.

“You look scared, Danny,” Zito says. The blood on his face makes Danny’s chest feel caved in, unable to believe that he is staying through this, not wanting to think that he will stay through worse. “Don’t be scared, man.”

Zito leans towards him, blurring until he’s just red and white and brown, and his mouth is on Danny’s cheek, spots and smears of blood transferring skin to skin. Danny is in shock, motionless.

“Don’t be scared, it’s okay,” Zito chants low, pressing his wounded arm on Danny’s chest so that a long skinny highway stains his shirt. “I’m crazy about you, it’s gonna be fine.”

Danny ties a white athletic sock around Zito’s arm when it becomes clear that Zito doesn’t own bandages. Zito pushes him against the mirror on the back of the bathroom door, and Danny dreamt this once, Zito on his knees. Danny can see the motionless red eye of a camera inside the faucet, so he takes off his shirt and slings it over the sink, disintegrating under Zito’s hands.

This is all going down in a police report someday.

The blood is still on both of their faces in the morning, dried almost to black. Danny can feel the cotton of the sock soft on his collarbone as Zito slides an arm up his chest from behind. Bits of blood flake off on Danny’s shoulder as Zito presses against his back and bites the nape of his neck. They’ve woken up on the murdered couch, stuffing coarse and chafing on Danny’s bare skin.

He hides his face so that Zito won’t see him crying, feeling the sunlight grow on the two of them, free of the storm at last.

*

Four days before the trade deadline, Danny is seeing wings and scars and wire-taps in unexpected places, at odd times of the day. He gets seriously uncomfortable when he’s in unsalted rooms, and explains to his fiancée that it’s just a new superstition they’ve all picked up, kneeling to line the doors. Black Cadillacs crowd the streets.

Frightened enough to try almost anything, he goes up to the executive offices and talks and talks until Beane’s assistant exhales in frustration and says, “Go, whatever, you’ve got five minutes.”

Beane is on the phone, talking fast and charming, and he raises his eyebrows as Danny comes in. Danny shuffles his feet and puts his hands in his pockets, studying the paraphernalia on Beane’s walls.

Ending the call, Beane leans back in his chair and asks, “You need something?”

Danny moves his shoulders, nervous, not liking that the door is at his back. Zito’s paranoia has sunk in and been transmitted like a disease, and Danny is achingly aware of his blind spots, the areas that he has left unguarded.

His mouth opens, but nothing comes out, thoughts stalling and jamming together in his mind. Zito has suffered a psychotic break. He blames you for everything that’s gone wrong in his life. He’s planning to kill you before midnight Friday, Eastern Standard Time.

“Dan, seriously,” Beane says, drumming his fingers. “I’ve got a lot going on right now, so, you know. If this can wait-”

Danny pulls himself together. “I need to tell you something.”

“Yeah?”

“There’s. I’m worried about Zito.”

Beane sits up straight. “Is he hurt? Tell me he’s not fucking hurt.”

Danny shakes his head, and it turns into a shrug. “Um. Kinda.”

“Fucking _unbelievable_ timing, that fucking kid. Jesus.” Beane scrapes his hand across his face, flipping quickly through a sheaf of paper on his desk. He mutters something about insurance and physicals, his brow knit.

“No, it’s not. Not like that. It’s.” Danny stops, overcome. Zito would call this treason; Danny isn’t sure he wouldn’t be right. Zito will never forgive him, call him a rat, cut him off. Murder him.

Beane’s glaring at him. “Spit it out, Danny.”

Thinking of the blood on Zito’s face, both their faces, Danny says without thinking, “He’s lost his mind, he’s dangerous and violent and coming for you,” but Beane doesn’t hear him because at the same moment the intercom crackles alive and Beane’s assistant is saying:

“I’ve got Minaya back on line two.”

Danny goes still, his skin suddenly cold. He feels his face collapse as he tightens his hands into fists in his pockets and asks flatly, “You making a deal with the Mets, Billy?”

All of Zito’s worst predictions are welling up inside him. Everything he knows about Lastings Milledge and the National League East, the disaster this team will be without Zito, and Danny is shaky with fear and anger. He gauges the desk between them, thinking that he could end this right here, use his bare hands so that Zito’s will stay clean.

Beane sits back, his eyes implacable. “What in God’s name makes you think I’ll answer that question?”

“You can’t do this.”

“The fuck are you talking about, man?”

“You _can’t_ ,” Danny insists, panicking. “Don’t you see what it’ll do to me? And he, he’ll never get back if he’s not, if he’s somewhere else, he’ll never get better.”

Something snaps across Beane’s face, concern or fear or something similar. “You’re talking kinda crazy,” he says slowly, and Danny laughs at that, squeezing his eyes shut. “Is there something going on that I should know about?”

Danny rips his head to the side, swallowing hard, over and over again. He thinks that Zito lost his mind in Beane’s hands, corrosive loyalty and blind faith, and this was stupid, this idea to warn Beane, protect him. Danny can’t save them both, and Christ knows where his allegiance lies.

“No. No.” Forcing his hands out of his pockets, Danny pushes one through his hair, eyeing the blinking red light on the phone distrustfully, knowing that Billy has surveillance in here, microphones and pin-sized cameras. “I’m sorry. I’m just. Fucking deadline. Fucks everyone up.” He stares at the wall over Beane’s shoulder. “Take your call. I’m gonna go. I’m sorry.”

“Wait a minute, what about Zito? Dan? Danny!”

But Danny’s gone.

*

Zito grabs him as Danny steps into the parking garage, and Danny half-shouts, yanks his arm out of Zito’s grasp. He finds himself clawing at his pocket for a switchblade that isn’t there.

“Fuck, don’t _do_ that,” he hisses, and Zito takes his hand, pulls him around the corner to where his car is parked. Their shoes echo off the concrete, and Zito’s got gauze wrapped around his forearm now, searing in the dark.

“You have to be more careful,” Zito says, not looking at him. “You never check your back. Anybody could, monsters, you can’t just think the blood is going to keep you safe.”

“What,” Danny starts, and then stops. He links his fingers with Zito’s for a moment, ignoring his cell phone vibrating in his pocket. “I’m trying, it’s just, there’s a lot.”

Zito lets him go and opens the back of his car. “I had an idea,” he says, far-away expression on his face. “Once I stop him, and we go to Chicago, and we shake the guys who’ve been following me. Billy probably hired them anyway, so if he’s gone, they’re gone, right? So we’ll be okay, like, free. I can’t remember the last time someone wasn’t watching me. We’ll throw the knife in the lake, sometime after curfew. And I think I’m gonna set my apartment building on fire before we leave. There’s a lot of stuff in there. They could use it against us.”

Words like ‘premeditated’ and ‘malice aforethought’ and ‘flight risk’ bounce around abstractly in Danny’s mind, diffusing like soap bubbles. The rest of the team has left already, black tire tracks on the concrete and the chunk taken out of one post from when Harden was fucked up on Nyquil and Vicodin, driving Crosby’s car.

“Okay, can we talk about this for a minute?” Danny says, the situation abruptly too real, overexposed. He’d hoped that they might be able to make it past the deadline and then Zito would cycle back down, but they’ve got three days and at the pace that Zito’s deteriorating, Friday will be much too late.

“I can’t tell you too much of the plan, dude, you can’t get caught in a lie.” Zito’s digging around in a blue duffel bag, the white gauze shining.

“I, I don’t want to hear the plan, no. Just hang on, okay, listen.” Danny takes hold of Zito’s hair and pulls him gently up and around to face him. Zito’s lower lip is chapped bad enough to bleed. “You can’t go through with this.”

Zito blinks, surprised. “I don’t have a choice, man.”

“Of course you do. How. How can you think that this is a reasonable thing to be doing?”

Sneering, Zito answers, “It’s not supposed to be _reasonable_ , Danny. Reason’s got nothing to do with it. I am redressing a goddamn imbalance. We’ve let him have too much power over us. Controls our whole lives. You’re next, you know. He gets rid of me, he’s gonna go right after you, because that’s what he does.”

Danny shakes his head. “It’s baseball, it’s not just him.”

“ _No_.” Zito’s eyes are hot and gleeful. “He’s traded guys for looking at him wrong. For _breathing_ wrong. He breaks the team apart like, like it’s a toy, like he just wants to see if he can put it back together again.”

“Maybe,” Danny whispers, very scared now as Zito’s teeth gnash. “But you can’t, these things you’ve been talking about, this plan, it’s insa-”

He bites down on his tongue, his shoulders jerking down at the pain. Zito’s face warps, his eyes sparked flares and lunatic, and Danny thinks that that’s it, Zito will kill him now, his chest and throat blatantly vulnerable. He braces himself, but Zito doesn’t do anything, the muscles in his arms strung tight.

“You think I’m insane, Danny?” Zito asks, his voice curious and gentle. Danny shakes his head automatically, swallowing blood. Zito widens his eyes. “Tell me the truth.”

Danny can’t stand looking at him, can’t look him in the eye and lie to him. Staring at the ground, he answers:

“I think you might be having kind of a nervous breakdown. A really small one. Like, not even broken so much as. Bent. Just a little bent.”

And I don’t know what to do, he wants to say. I can’t figure out if I’m scared of you or for you. I’ve started seeing things that aren’t there, too. You’re prepared to kill in order to stay here, and I might be ready to do the same.

Looking up, Danny finds Zito gnawing on his lip, looking drop-dead young and exactly as terrified as Danny has been for weeks now.

“Bent, huh?” he says on a breath.

Danny puts his hand on Zito’s hip, forcing down the bad parts into a jagged ball in the bottom of his stomach. “I might be too.”

Zito slides his fingers onto Danny’s wrist and up his arm, and Danny is painfully aware of it, two thin trails. Zito has perfectly corrupted him, brought blue light into Danny’s life. Zito has changed him irrevocably. It’s okay, Danny thinks, touching Zito’s face with the tips of his fingers, figuring that falling in love is a form of insanity, anyway.

“Are you with me, Danny?” Zito asks him solemnly. “Because I can do anything, I can fix this, as long as I know that you’re sticking around.”

Danny’s heart snaps. He kisses Zito, his hand flat on Zito’s cheek. “I’m with you. All the way, man,” he promises, and Zito smiles against his mouth and Danny can feel pushing up in his throat, I don’t exist without you. I’ll do anything.

Zito pulls away with a stunning grin, and digs into the duffel bag again, emerging with a plain white envelope. He presses it into Danny’s hand.

“Here. Hold onto this for me, will you?”

“What is it?” Danny asks, turning it over.

“My will.” Danny’s eyes dart up, and Zito’s shrugging, fingering the knife in his pocket. “Just in case.”

Sleepwalking, Danny folds the envelope in half and pushes it into his pocket. His mouth is dusty and thick, jumping as Zito slams the hatchback closed. He checks the corners and angles, quiet enough to hear the spies breathing behind the stone support posts.

“Take your car,” Zito tells him, his face set and distant again. “Don’t go home for a couple hours, okay? You followed me to my place and we watched Justice League on DVD and had popcorn for dinner and drank Rolling Rock until you said you had to stop because you wouldn’t be able to drive. You were with me until at least two in the morning, okay?”

Danny nods, stricken. “I was with you until two in the morning.”

Zito grins. “It’s gonna be all right. I’ll see you tomorrow and it’ll be fine.”

He kisses Danny again, holding onto the front of his shirt like he’s drowning. Danny can sympathize, in far over his head, his lungs damaged by salt. He whispers, “Be careful,” and Zito swears he will, crossing his heart.

Danny walks to his car without looking back. Zito’s ghost follows him, smiling sweetly and pushing the hair off his forehead. They’re going to the city and they’re gonna watch Justice League and have beer and popcorn. Danny’s gonna throw his arm around Zito’s shoulders and they’re gonna neck on the remains of the couch, Danny’s hands buried in white.

With Billy Beane out of the way, they’ll have forever.

Zito’s ghost laughs silently in the shotgun seat as Danny watches taillights vanish under the gate. He rips the end of the envelope off with his teeth and unfolds the will, something crushed inside him when he sees that Zito has left him everything.

“What’d you expect, man?” Zito’s ghost asks, propping his knee up on the dashboard.

“Nothing like this,” Danny answers, his voice echoing, and they drive out together into the world, the sky arching thickly black, the moon as clean as snow and unblinking, recording their movements as they travel through the unfamiliar night.

THE END


End file.
